Crimson Desert arrives this week as a modern-day Atlas, carrying a world of hype on its shoulders. The reviews are out, and you can now get a sense of what it’s actually like to play this thing. Well, mostly. Based on our experience, most reviews you’ll read today cover the Windows PC version of the game, not the PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X versions.
Polygon was given access to Crimson Desert on Steam in early March. PS5 and Xbox Series X copies, we were told, would not be available until launch. To pull the curtain back a tad, this is atypical for major games. Yes, console copies of games might come in later than PC copies; Microsoft and Sony tend to have stricter certification requirements than Valve, meaning it’s easier for publishers to send out PC codes. But for multiplatform games, reviewers generally get a chance to play the game on all of those platforms ahead of release.
To some, the situation is similar to the 2020 review cycle around Cyberpunk 2077. Ahead of release, developer CD Projekt Red only made PC versions of the game available to critics. Reviews at launch were glowing. But it turned out the PS4 and Xbox One versions of the game were disastrously dysfunctional. Sony pulled the game from the PlayStation Store and offered refunds to buyers, and CDPR apologized for the state of its release, admitting in an investor call that its console release was the “wrong approach.” (It took a few years, but Cyberpunk 2077‘s console versions have a good reputation now.)
To be clear, the situation around Crimson Desert is not exactly the same as the one with Cyberpunk 2077. Over the past few weeks, the experts at Digital Foundry tested Crimson Desert out on PS5 Pro, and walked away with a glowing impression. Across all three game modes — one that prioritizes visual quality, one that prioritizes frame rates, and one that strikes a balance — Digital Foundry found that frame rates largely remained stable, except in circumstances with lots of on-screen enemies. Visual quality also impressed Digital Foundry, down to the way tides slosh against shorelines or the fact that smoke casts shadows.
In its preview, Digital Foundry did not test Crimson Desert on the base model of PS5, but PlayStation Japan recently published a 20-minute video showing Crimson Desert footage running on the base model of the console. To an untrained eye, or to one who does not care too much about the fidelity arms race, the difference is negligible. In PlayStation Japan’s video, Crimson Desert on PS5 looks pretty solid! But we can’t say for sure: Polygon, and many other reviewers, have not been able to go hands-on with that version (and also that the footage was published by a company that owns a platform on which you can purchase Crimson Desert).
When reached for comment on why Polygon wasn’t provided with console code ahead of launch day, representatives for Pearl Abyss directed Polygon toward PlayStation Japan’s video.
Crimson Desert launched to a 79 on the review aggregator Metacritic. As of this writing, all 51 reviews catalogued by Metacritic were conducted on PC. Polygon’s impressions, based on roughly 20 hours of traditional gameplay, took some issues with the controls, narrative, and empty-seeming open-world structure, but praised the action. We’ll continue to play the game across all platforms in the coming days and weeks.
Crimson Desert is out March 19 for PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X, though won’t be available until March 20 for certain regions around the world.
